Jay Rosenblatt

Directing

Jay Rosenblatt

Jay Rosenblatt is an American experimental documentary filmmaker known for his work in the field of collage film since 1980.

Acting credits

I Am a Sex Addict poster
5.5

Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends.

I Am a Sex Addict

2006

The Show About Sundance poster
NR

Caveh is commissioned by Fandor to film awkward celebrity encounters at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This is a documentary about his time at the festival filming those encounters.

The Show About Sundance

2017

When We Were Bullies poster
4.9

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

When We Were Bullies

2021

How Do You Measure a Year? poster
6.5

For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

How Do You Measure a Year?

2021

In the Bathtub of the World poster
7.0

On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.

In the Bathtub of the World

2001

The Show About the Show poster
8.0

Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong. The cast, a who's who of Brooklyn's independent filmmaking community, includes Alex Karpovsky, Eleonore Hendricks, Dustin Defa, and Onur Tukel.

The Show About the Show

2017

No artwork available
9.0

A 'dog-u-mentary' about birth, loss and near death. The film follows three adults and a dog named Lola through Lola's pregnancy, the birth of her puppies, and the loss of each puppy to their new owners. Often funny and ultimately sad, the piece explores our love and attachments to dogs and our projections onto animals.

A Pregnant Moment

Heartbeat poster
NR

This emotionally raw and intimate documentary, shot 25 years ago, follows a couple - the filmmakers – in their complicated journey towards bringing a new life into the world. In today's landscape of reproductive rights, this story takes on a new meaning and offers a rare view into this moment in their lives.

Heartbeat

2025

I Used to Be a Filmmaker poster
7.3

A film about fatherhood and the bond between a father and his infant daughter. The filmmaker documents the first eighteen months of the child’s life, showing the progression from newborn to infant to toddler.

I Used to Be a Filmmaker

2003

The Film Within the Film poster
NR

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts commissions Caveh Zahedi to make a film.

The Film Within the Film

2005

Beginning Filmmaking poster
NR

A father takes us through one year of trying to teach a preschooler how to make a film.

Beginning Filmmaking

2008

King of the Jews poster
8.0

King of the Jews is a film about anti-Semitism and transcendence. Utilizing Hollywood movies, 1950's educational films, personal home movies and religious films, the filmmaker depicts his childhood fear of Jesus Christ. These childhood recollections are a point of departure for larger issues such as the roots of Christian anti-Semitism.

King of the Jews

2000

No artwork available
6.0

An old man reflects on his entire life. How quickly it all goes by.

The D Train

2011

Behind the camera

Filmmakers Unite (FU) poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Filmmakers Unite (FU)

2017

When We Were Bullies poster
4.9

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

When We Were Bullies

2021

When We Were Bullies poster
4.9

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

When We Were Bullies

2021

When We Were Bullies poster
4.9

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

When We Were Bullies

2021

How Do You Measure a Year? poster
6.5

For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

How Do You Measure a Year?

2021

How Do You Measure a Year? poster
6.5

For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

How Do You Measure a Year?

2021

Period Piece poster
5.2

Period Piece is a 30 min. documentary about menarche--a girl's first menstrual period--which is a fundamental experience in every woman's life, yet one that is rarely celebrated. Women of different ages (8-84) and multi-cultural backgrounds tell their menarchal stories.

Period Piece

1996

Period Piece poster
5.2

Period Piece is a 30 min. documentary about menarche--a girl's first menstrual period--which is a fundamental experience in every woman's life, yet one that is rarely celebrated. Women of different ages (8-84) and multi-cultural backgrounds tell their menarchal stories.

Period Piece

1996

Human Remains poster
7.3

Human Remains is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives -- their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film.

Human Remains

1998

Phantom Limb poster
7.1

The death of my seven-year-old brother when I was nine remains a painful and haunting memory. My parents did not know how to cope with the loss of their child and the entire family experienced indescribable pain. Phantom Limb uses this personal story as a point of departure. Whether it is a loss through death or divorce, the stages of grieving are the same. Individuals often go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, some kind of acceptance, in order to heal. The film is loosely structured according to these stages. Interspersed throughout this poetic documentary are interviews with a cemetery owner, a phantom limb patient and an author of a book about evidence for life after death. Phantom Limb reminds viewers that while grief is painful and isolating, it is a reminder to each of us that life is impermanent. - Jay Rosenblatt

Phantom Limb

2005

Phantom Limb poster
7.1

The death of my seven-year-old brother when I was nine remains a painful and haunting memory. My parents did not know how to cope with the loss of their child and the entire family experienced indescribable pain. Phantom Limb uses this personal story as a point of departure. Whether it is a loss through death or divorce, the stages of grieving are the same. Individuals often go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, some kind of acceptance, in order to heal. The film is loosely structured according to these stages. Interspersed throughout this poetic documentary are interviews with a cemetery owner, a phantom limb patient and an author of a book about evidence for life after death. Phantom Limb reminds viewers that while grief is painful and isolating, it is a reminder to each of us that life is impermanent. - Jay Rosenblatt

Phantom Limb

2005

Phantom Limb poster
7.1

The death of my seven-year-old brother when I was nine remains a painful and haunting memory. My parents did not know how to cope with the loss of their child and the entire family experienced indescribable pain. Phantom Limb uses this personal story as a point of departure. Whether it is a loss through death or divorce, the stages of grieving are the same. Individuals often go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, some kind of acceptance, in order to heal. The film is loosely structured according to these stages. Interspersed throughout this poetic documentary are interviews with a cemetery owner, a phantom limb patient and an author of a book about evidence for life after death. Phantom Limb reminds viewers that while grief is painful and isolating, it is a reminder to each of us that life is impermanent. - Jay Rosenblatt

Phantom Limb

2005

The Claustrum poster
7.0

Three women are in enclosed psychological zones that function as both refuge and jail.

The Claustrum

2014

The Claustrum poster
7.0

Three women are in enclosed psychological zones that function as both refuge and jail.

The Claustrum

2014

Brain in the Desert poster
7.0

A haunting and humorous film about romantic relationships and insects.

Brain in the Desert

1990

The Smell of Burning Ants poster
6.0

A haunting documentary on the pains of growing up male. It explores the inner and outer cruelties that boys perpetrate and endure. The film provokes the viewer to reflect on how our society can deprive boys of wholeness.

The Smell of Burning Ants

1994

I'm Charlie Chaplin poster
NR

... because it's Halloween.

I'm Charlie Chaplin

2005

No artwork available
8.0

A woman is reduced to tears. She bends over backwards trying to be a good wife and mother. Her head is cut off from her heart. A doctor picks her brain. A boy inherits his mother's depression. Short of Breath is a haunting, emotional collage about birth, death, sex and suicide. It's like a punch in the stomach.

Short of Breath

1991

No artwork available
8.0

A woman is reduced to tears. She bends over backwards trying to be a good wife and mother. Her head is cut off from her heart. A doctor picks her brain. A boy inherits his mother's depression. Short of Breath is a haunting, emotional collage about birth, death, sex and suicide. It's like a punch in the stomach.

Short of Breath

1991

No artwork available
NR

Mary Shelley’s writing combines with Boris Karloff’s performance to re-work the myth of Frankenstein. In five minutes the “monster” moves through the very human journey from self-hatred to self-acceptance.

Friend Good

No artwork available
9.0

A 'dog-u-mentary' about birth, loss and near death. The film follows three adults and a dog named Lola through Lola's pregnancy, the birth of her puppies, and the loss of each puppy to their new owners. Often funny and ultimately sad, the piece explores our love and attachments to dogs and our projections onto animals.

A Pregnant Moment

No artwork available
9.0

A 'dog-u-mentary' about birth, loss and near death. The film follows three adults and a dog named Lola through Lola's pregnancy, the birth of her puppies, and the loss of each puppy to their new owners. Often funny and ultimately sad, the piece explores our love and attachments to dogs and our projections onto animals.

A Pregnant Moment

No artwork available
6.7

The Darkness of Day is a haunting meditation on suicide. It is comprised entirely of found 16mm footage that had been discarded. The sadness, the isolation, and the desire to escape are recorded on film in various contexts. Voice-over readings from the journal kept by a brother of the filmmaker’s friend who committed suicide in 1990 intermix with a range of compelling stories, from the poignant double suicide of an elderly American couple to a Japanese teenager who jumped into a volcano, spawning over a thousand imitations. While this is a serious exploration of a cultural taboo, its lyrical qualities invite the viewer to approach the subject with understanding and compassion.

The Darkness of Day

2009

No artwork available
6.7

The Darkness of Day is a haunting meditation on suicide. It is comprised entirely of found 16mm footage that had been discarded. The sadness, the isolation, and the desire to escape are recorded on film in various contexts. Voice-over readings from the journal kept by a brother of the filmmaker’s friend who committed suicide in 1990 intermix with a range of compelling stories, from the poignant double suicide of an elderly American couple to a Japanese teenager who jumped into a volcano, spawning over a thousand imitations. While this is a serious exploration of a cultural taboo, its lyrical qualities invite the viewer to approach the subject with understanding and compassion.

The Darkness of Day

2009